Projects

A hidden gem in the heart of Treviso

A cruciform facade marks the new entrance to this art museum, which occupies a 15th-century monastery building in Treviso, a historical city located near Venice.The Museo Bailo hosts a collection of 20th-century art, but was closed 15 years ago as the former monastery building was in need of significant refurbishment.Studiomas architetti associati with austrian architect Heinz Tesar won a competition to renovate the museum in 2010.The architects added a new frontage to the southern end of the historic building, which was bomb-damaged during the second world war and reconstructed in 1952.The cross-shaped form is made from panels of articifical stone dotted with small perforations. It is mounted in front of walls coated in a type of polished plaster called Marmorino, which is made from a mixture of Carrara marble and white cement.The museum needed a new facade, more adequate to its institutional role and to its position in the centre of the ancient town; the existing facade, rebuilt in 1952, was totally lacking in quality.The new facade, a composition of eight precast artificial-stone slabs, stands out in a white marmorino background.Behind the façade an extension made from white concrete was slotted into a narrow inner courtyard. It forms the museum's new arcade and hosts ticket hall and book shop, but is also used as an exhibition space and conference hall.A skylight runs the length of the 28-metre-long extension, helping to bring natural light into the building.

Three windows – one in the axis of the cross, another to the right of the door and a third in the flank of the extension – face onto a small piazza in front of the building. One of these windows provides a view into the southern cloister, where a sculpture of Biblical figures Adam and Eve is displayed.The work was designed by Arturo Martini (1889-1947), a Treviso-born artist whose paintings, sculptures and graphics are included in the museum's collection.The gallery walls are covered in sand-coloured stucco and the floors are made of terrazzo, Carrara marble and white cement – a reference to the finish used on the building's outer walls.Partition walls were removed from rooms in the old part of the building to reveal the original layout, which now features a series of wide, vaulted galleries.A conservative restoration of all the building's original decorative elements, materials and structures has been achieved in the cloister, in the vaulted rooms as well as in the wall's decorative paintings.Sculptures are displayed on a series of mottled grey plinths and in vitrines designed by the architects.All the bases, the glass cases, the tables and the furniture have been re-designed like a family of small architectures serving the art works, hosted in the ancient rooms of the museum.The museum reopened to visitors at the end of October 2015.